God of the Cracks

Life of the Church

Good morning, everyone. Happy Easter. He is risen, he is risen indeed. It’s good to see you all here in worship.

There are a few announcements I’d like to highlight from your bulletins as we begin.

First, please keep Larry Campbell in your prayers. Larry is at the emergency room right now suffering from vertigo and weakness. He’s getting some testing done, so please keep him and Amy in your prayers.

As part of our area churches combined outreach into our community, we are one of several town churches collecting a special offering today to help pay off the school lunch debt for students in Stuarts Draft. Believe it or not, students among our three schools in town owe a total of $7,253.41, and many of these families struggle to repay that debt. We’re hoping our area churches can put a big dent in that today, so please give as you are led. You can mark your check or envelope with “school lunch” and we’ll make sure your gift gets where it needs to go.

Speaking of our local churches coming together, we’re still working with the county and some businesses to find both a date and a location for a community revival. In the meantime, on April 23 — which is two weeks away — we’re going to hold a good old fashioned pulpit swap. I’ll have more information next week about that and who our guest preacher will be.

There will be no men’s group tonight in honor of Easter.

And please notice that during the month of April we’re collecting a new round of supplies for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. This month’s items are clothing and accessories, and you’ll see a list of those in your bulletins.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father, we give you praise this day for the resurrection of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the sadness and despair of his death has given way to the bright promise of immortality. For the Resurrection is our guarantee that justice will triumph over treason, Light will overcome darkness, and love will conquer death.

As we celebrate, we also ask for your grace that we may live the promise given to us, by imitating the life of Jesus in reaching out to the the least among us as we strive to be neighbor to all those we meet. We praise you in this Easter season. Change our lives, change our hearts to be messengers of Easter joy and hope. We as this through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord forever, Amen.

Sermon

Have you ever thought about how Easter sounds to someone who isn’t a Christian? We take this story for granted as believers. We hold it to be true because there are excellent historical reasons for its truth, and we’re going to touch on some of those today. But if we take an honest look at Easter though the eyes of people who don’t know anything about Christianity, there’s kind of a big problem — it all sounds too good to be true. And what are we always taught about something that sounds too good to be true? If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.

Because here’s what they say: So you’re telling me that about 2,000 years ago God — GOD — was arrested. By people. And beaten. And then put on trial. And you’re telling me that then he was killed in an ancient version of the electric chair, and buried.

But a few days later, his body was gone. And it wasn’t that his friends had stolen that body, or that somehow a few people had visited the wrong tomb. No, that body was gone because this man — God — had come back to life. And you’re saying that he didn’t just come back to life, but that he was seen. People saw him. Talked to him.

And you’re saying that he did all of this dying and raising up for me, even though this happened 2,000 years ago. All I have to do is believe this happened, and believe he loves me, and believe he died to take the blame for all the bad stuff I do. And then ... what? Then when I die, I don’t just fade away? That instead, death gets turned into something like waking up? That instead of sleep and darkness, there’s life and light? I get a new body and get to live in a new and perfect world forever, and all of my loved ones who believed will be there too, and so will God himself, and we’ll have an eternity of nothing but joy and peace, with no pain, no worry, no fear, no heartbreak, and no boredom. Is that what you’re saying?

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. But it sounds too good to be true. All of this pain and dying that Christ endured, the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, heaven and eternal life, all of that is free? That can’t be true.

And the reason why people struggle with that is because as good Americans, we’re raised by parents who instill in us from a very early age that you have to earn what you get. That’s true of your house, your car, your clothes, everything. You have to earn those things. And if that’s true of something as simple and basic as a television, that has to be even more true of something so powerful and life-changing as the forgiveness of your sins.

But God says, No. It’s free. It has to be, because you might be able to earn a house or a car or a new back porch, but you’re never going to be able to earn the forgiveness of your sins. There’s no good you can do to erase all of your bad. They’ll never even out. And even if you could even all of that out, it still wouldn’t fix the brokenness that’s still inside you. But because of Easter, God now says, “You just hand all of your mess over to me, and I’ll fix it instead.”

That’s the true miracle of Easter. And all the hope and meaning and joy of Easter is nowhere written better than in John chapter 20. Turn there with me now. We’ll be reading verses 1-18:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.

They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

And this is God’s holy word.

This account in John has disciples and angels and Jesus himself, but there’s one person whom John seems to focus upon through these eighteen verses, and that’s Mary Magdalene. Who’s Mary Magdalene?

She’s mentioned by name twelve times in the gospels, which doesn’t sound like a lot but is also more than most of the other disciples. Jesus had healed her from seven demons. She was evidently a wealthy woman who helped fund Jesus’s ministry. Mary witnessed most of the events surrounding the crucifixion. She was present at Jesus’s trial and heard Pilate pronounce the sentence of death. She saw Jesus beaten and mocked. She was one of the women who stood near the cross, trying to comfort her Lord. And for reasons we’ll get to soon, Mary’s also called “The Apostle to the Apostles”.

She was a woman of faith, but as we find her here in verse 1, she’s a grieving and broken woman. It’s the first day of the week. Christ had been buried on the sixth day. Mary and the other women had seen where Jesus had been laid to rest and had gone home to prepare spices and ointments to anoint the dead body. But it was late and the seventh day was the Sabbath, and so according to Jewish law she had to rest.

So early the next day, Easter Sunday, she arrives at the tomb. There are other women with her, but John focuses on Mary. They’re talking about how they’ll handle the problem of moving the great stone covering the entrance, but as it turns out that’s a problem they won’t have to solve at all. When Mary and the others arrive, they find the stone has already been rolled away. More than that, the tomb itself is empty.

Notice these verses don’t say that Mary looked into the tomb. She doesn’t have to. The stone is moved, the soldiers guarding the tomb aren’t there, and so Mary knows the body of Jesus is gone.

Her heart’s is already broken. Now it shatters into pieces. She runs back to the disciples, two of them in particular. One of those disciples is Peter — and we know all about what Peter’s going through right now, don’t we? Peter’s still trying to get over the fact that he’s denied Christ. The other disciple — verse 2 says he’s “the one whom Jesus loved” — is John, the author of this gospel. In verse two, the Greek adds the word “to” in front of the phrase “the other disciple.” Mary went to Peter and to John, meaning Peter and John weren’t together. Peter may have felt too ashamed, we don’t know. But Mary says to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Now, who is “they”? The priests? The Romans? Friends? Enemies? Mary doesn’t know, doesn’t care. All that matters is that her Lord is gone. It was terrible enough that he’d been crucified, but at least she could show one last bit of her love and devotion by preparing his dead body. Now Mary can’t even do that. It was terrible enough that her Lord had suffered such a humiliating death. Now someone has desecrated his corpse. He’s not in the tomb anymore, and notice the resurrection is nowhere in Mary’s mind. Neither is it in the minds of John and Peter. That’s the last thing they’re considering.

The two disciples run to the tomb, with Mary following behind. John’s a little younger, a little more in shape, so he gets there first. In verse 5 we see that John stoops in to look inside the tomb, and there’s no body. He sees the linen cloths lying in the place where Jesus had been laid, but there’s nothing else.

Now, verses 6 and 7:

“Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.”

I want you to pay careful attention to the word “saw” there in verse 6. The Greek word is _thiourea_. It’s where we get the English word _theorize_. It’s a word that means to observe something intently in order to reach an explanation. It’s thinking hard. It’s doing the exact opposite of what a lot of non-Christians think that Christians do.

Peter’s not even considering a miracle here. He’s not making the leap that something impossible has happened, he’s trying to find some ordinary explanation.

Maybe he thinks Mary went to the wrong tomb. Jesus was never buried here. After all, it was still dark when she got to the garden. Maybe Peter asked Mary that. But Mary would say no, she and the other woman had seen where Jesus had been laid. He was buried in a new tomb, and new tombs were well-known.

And even if it is a new tomb, this one’s obviously been used. There’s no body, but the burial cloths are still here. So are the spices that keep the body from smelling. So somebody had to have been buried here.

And speaking of those burial clothes, what about grave robbery? That had to be on Mary’s mind as she ran to tell Peter and John, and it has to be on Peter and John’s minds too. Grave-robbing is common.

But there’s a problem with that theory too. Why steal Jesus’s body? He wasn’t rich. He didn’t even have enough money to own a home. And he wasn’t famous, at least in a good way. He’d just been crucified as a criminal. And even if it was grave robbers, why leave behind the linen that covered the body? That folded face cloth in verse 7 is such a small but great detail. The face cloth was the most expensive thing in the tomb, but this one’s been folded neatly and left behind almost as a message. Why not take the spices? Those spices are worth a lot of money too.

Peter and John are doing what we should all do. They’re thinking things through. They’re looking for possibilities and then judging those possibilities to try and get to the truth. Peter’s being like my favorite fictional character. He’s pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes once said that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbably, must be the truth.

But both Peter and John aren’t prepared for that truth yet. Jesus had told them exactly what was going to happen. He would be crucified and then raised, but they’re not thinking about that right now. Verse 9 says, “for as yet, they did not understand the Scripture.”

And because they don’t yet understand, there’s nothing left for the disciples to do. The body’s missing, and sooner or later the authorities are going to come, and neither Peter or John want to be around when that happens. So they leave. They go back to their homes, according to verse 10, and now Mary is left completely alone.

Poor Mary. She’s lost her Lord not once but twice, and now Peter and John leave her as well. Her heart’s in pieces. She’s standing outside the tomb weeping. And she looks inside — maybe wanting one last glimpse, maybe trying to see if her two friends had missed a clue — and sees two angels. There can be no better picture of the miracle that has happened than this one. One at the head, one at the foot, with the empty space where Jesus had laid in the middle. Jesus is gone, but there’s no reason at all for sadness, only joy. That’s why they ask her in verse 13, “Why are you weeping?”

Mary says, “They’ve taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they laid him.”

Here we might have a clue of what Mary thinks has happened. Maybe Jesus’s body was only supposed to be kept there over the Sabbath, then it would be moved by friends to another place.

Mary’s grief is too great. She turns, and there’s Jesus standing behind her. But verse 14 says that Mary doesn’t know it’s Jesus. She thinks Jesus is the gardener.

How can Mary, one of Jesus’s closest followers, not know the man standing there is Jesus?

But let’s think this through. First, remember it’s dark when Mary reaches the tomb. It’s still dark in verse 14, or at least barely light, so it’s hard to see. Everything at best is still in shadow.

Second — and this is so obvious that a lot of people skip right past it — Mary’s not looking for a resurrected Jesus, is she? She’s looking for a dead Jesus. She’s looking for Jesus’s body. To think that the man standing there beside her is Jesus doesn’t even enter her mind. Because that’s just impossible. So of course she’s going to think that this man is the gardener, because it’s a man, and it’s early, and they’re standing in a garden.

Also, you have to remember that Mary’s frightened. She’s crying, which makes it hard for her to see. Jesus asks her a question in verse 15 — “Why are you weeping?” — and she must have turned away to look back into the tomb, because verse 16 says she turns back to Jesus after he speaks again. That means this first look she gives Jesus in verse 14 is only a glance.

So Mary has looked at this man for only an instant, in near dark, through tears, and all she’s looking for is not a living Lord but a dead body. Kind of easy to see why she didn’t immediately recognize the resurrected Jesus, isn’t it?

But look at how gently Jesus treats her. He’s asking Mary questions — “Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Mary’s hurting. She’s heartbroken. But now listen — Mary is heartbroken for the same reason that we often are. She’s heartbroken because her understanding of Jesus is too small. She’s looking for a dead Christ when the living Lord is standing right there with her.

Jesus knows that Mary’s heard him say he’s the light of the world. That he would die and rise again. That he would judge everyone who’s ever lived. But he also knows that Mary’s faith is still small. And because Mary’s faith is still small, she can’t truly see him. She can’t find Jesus, and so Jesus comes to find her. It has to be Jesus who opens your eyes to the truth, it has to be Jesus who opens your heart to salvation, because everything you have is just too small. Everything in our lives tries to shrink Jesus down. But he won’t let us do that. He’s too big. There’s too much grace.

And that’s what Easter is all about. It’s all about grace. We don’t earn our salvation because we can’t earn our salvation. It’s given to us. Look at verse 17:

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Go,” he tells Mary. “Go to my brothers.” What does it say about the gospel that the person Jesus chooses to be his first messenger to the world of his resurrection is not just a woman — we’ll see why that’s important in a minute — but a woman once plagued by demons? That’s how powerful the message of grace is. It’s a message that says it doesn’t matter how good or important you are, and it doesn’t matter how bad or unknown you are. God still loves you, and God still wants to bring joy to the world through you. The gospel only saves people who don’t think they’re strong but know they’re weak.

Do you know what my favorite part of this whole account in John is? The one verse in all of this that makes Easter so incredible? It’s verse 16. How does Jesus reveal himself to Mary? Does he pop out from behind her and say, “Surprise!” No, what’s he say? He says, “Mary.”

What makes Easter so incredible? Jesus knows your name. Jesus knows exactly who you are, what you’ve been through, what you’re going through, what you’ve done, how you’ve failed, and he says, “I love you personally — I know your name. I love you expensively — I died for you. And I love you eternally.”

That last bit it found in what Jesus says to Mary in verse 17. He says, “Don’t cling to me, Mary.” What’s Jesus talking about here? He’s talking about the box Mary tried to fit him in. Mary thought Christ was dead. There’s no way he could be resurrected, even though he said time and again that’s exactly what would happen. But Mary couldn’t see it. Mary thinks Jesus is going to stay with her and the disciples. She can’t see what Jesus is really doing because she’s too busy trying to put her Lord in a box. God won’t ever let you do that, because God always has something greater than what you can imagine. God always has something bigger than you can conceive.

“Don’t hold on to me,” he says. “Don’t hold on to me as if you’re scared you’re going to lose me again, Mary, because I’m going to heaven to be at the right hand of God. I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to you, and then you’ll have me in a way you can’t possibly imagine. You’ll have me a in a way that means you’ll never lose me, and we’ll be together forever. I’m going to make all things new, Mary. One day I’m going to make all things new on earth and in heaven, and in the meantime, I’m going to make all things new in you.”

There are two questions we have to answer today. One is whether this event really happened at all. The other is if it did happen, what does it mean for me?

Let’s take that first question — did the resurrection actually happen?

Historians say that one of the best pieces of evidence for the truth of the resurrection is the person who first finds the tomb empty, and that’s Mary Magdalene. For us, it doesn’t matter a bit that a woman was the first person to witness the empty tomb. But in that time and in that culture, this was a huge problem. In fact, a lot of early critics of Christianity wrote that none of this resurrection stuff could be believed at all because it’s all based on a woman’s testimony. But in every one of the Gospel accounts, the first witnesses to the risen Christ are women. If you’re going to invent a story about something like the resurrection of the dead by a man who is God Himself, you would never have women as a witness at all, much less women who were the first witnesses. So the fact that the gospels have women at the heart of the resurrection story isn’t proof of a lie, it’s actually proof these words are true.

A second piece of evidence is found in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians less than 20 years after Jesus died. It’s to the Corinthian church, of course, but that letter was then recopied and sent to churches all through the Roman and Jewish world. And in 1 Corinthians 15:6, Paul writes this:

“Then he (meaning Christ) appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

Paul writes that there are hundreds of people who were still alive when he sent this letter who had witnessed first-hand Jesus resurrected from the dead. Now if that wasn’t true, if there weren’t hundreds alive who had seen the risen Christ, what would have happened? All these people would have spoken up and called Paul a liar. Paul would have been exposed as a fraud, and 1 Corinthians wouldn’t even exist. Those letters would have been tossed away or burned. So the very fact that you have a book in your Bible called 1 Corinthians is proof — and a powerful proof — that the resurrection really did happen.

I’ll give you one more bit of evidence, and this one is actually the most powerful. It’s the lives that were completely changed as a result of Easter Sunday. Look at the disciples. Who were they? Fishermen. A tax collector. Ordinary men who were uneducated. But then something happened. Something happened that completely transformed this uneducated and unmotivated men into people who preached and taught and proclaimed and laughed in the face of persecution and even death.

All of them but John would die terrible deaths because they refused to abandon their faith. They’d turned away from Christ at his death, but they would never turn away after his resurrection. They went to their deaths laughing and singing and rejoicing, and let me ask you this: would anybody willingly endure torture, would anyone gladly lay down their life, for something they knew was a lie? No way. No way would anyone do that.

You see? People who say that the only way you can believe in the resurrection is if you put your brain away and rely on superstition are the ones who haven’t bothered to really look at this story at all. It takes faith to believe, absolutely. But faith doesn’t mean not using your mind.

Now that last question — What does the resurrection mean for you?

When Christ left this world, he made his will. He left his soul to his Father. He left his body to Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb. His clothes went to the soldiers. His mother’s care went to John. But what would Jesus leave to his disciples? What would he leave to you and to me?

To us, Jesus would leave the best thing of all: he would leave his peace.

But you can ask, “How can I possibly have peace with God after what I’ve done? After what I’m doing? How can somebody as awful as me find peace with a God as holy as Him?”

Well, that’s the best part of everything I’ve said. If you understand even a little bit about yourself and the world, you know that everything is broken. You’re broken — you do and think and say all sorts of horrible things, and often you don’t even know why. Our institutions are broken — government, the church, society itself. Even nature is broken — the news is filled with stories of tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes. That brokenness came into the world long before you were born, and we all feel it. We all have the sense that not only is something wrong, it was never supposed to be like this. We try everything to make it right again. We try being better. We try more education. We try changing ourselves and changing politics. But nothing ever works. No matter what we try, those cracks in us and in our world seem to just get bigger. We keep breaking into even more pieces. So how can we have the peace of Jesus, knowing all of that?

(I have a picture for you today. Harvey, go ahead and put that up.)

There’s a Japanese art form called _kentsugi_. The name means “joining with gold.” It’s the art of putting things back together. When a piece of pottery is broken, it’s not thrown away. Instead the pieces are collected and put back together with a glue that’s made by a mixture of tree sap and gold flakes.

After it dries, the bowl or cup is so strong that often artists will test them by dropping them on the floor again to see if they’ll break. If it’s done right, they won’t break at all anymore. And so where you once had this worthless broken piece of pottery, you now have something that’s much stronger, much more beautiful, and much more valuable.

What does Paul compare us to in 2 Corinthians 4? Remember? He says we’re all just jars of clay. We’re all fragile, and we all end up getting dropped. We all break.

But even if we think we’re worthless, God won’t throw us away. Instead He finds all of our pieces and fits them all back together, and the golden glue that God uses is Christ’s death and resurrection. That glue is what takes all of your hurts, all of your pains, all of your sufferings, even all of your sins, and transforms it into something that’s stronger, more beautiful, and more valuable that glorifies Him.

We celebrate this Easter Sunday as Christ’s victory over the grave, because his victory is ours. That single act changed the course of human history. By that one act, you have eternal life if your trust is in him. If that isn’t cause for joy, I don’t know what is.

That empty tomb is more than a miracle, it’s the greatest miracle we can possibly imagine. It’s a miracle that took the greatest evil there is — death — and turned it into nothing less than closing your eyes in this life to open them in a next life that is so beautiful, so joyful, that our minds can’t even hold it. It’s a miracle that’s given for your joy not only at the moment of death but in all your moments of life, because Jesus says, “Don’t worry, I got you. I’ll hold you together. I’m the God of the cracks that are in your life and in your heart, and I know your name. I am never not with you. I love you personally, and expensively, and eternally.”

That’s the true miracle of Easter. And if you don’t know that miracle, if you’re missing that joy in your life, then I invite you down here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Almighty Father, thank You for the gift of Your forgiveness, for binding up our brokenness. Forgive us for the ways we try to "help" You save and fix me. Help us to simply receive what You have done for us on the Cross. "Simply" receiving sometimes isn't so simple. Give us the strength to be still and receive Your mercy and grace in this moment through the Savior who saves completely.

We thank You for the resurrection of Your Son, Jesus. We want to celebrate Him every day of our lives. In a world that grows increasingly dark, help us hold up His light. Give us the courage to speak as boldly as Mary Magdalene did, and never be ashamed of proclaiming Your Good News. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.